MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Now to your letters. And a lot of them were about Sylvia Martinez. Martinez was the subject of our story on Friday about the psychological toll of losing a job.
Ms. SYLVIA MARTINEZ: I feel so worthless and so hopeless. It's just so hard to behold.
NORRIS: Some wrote with thanks for shedding light on emotional turmoil that can accompany a lay off and the growing the number of calls to suicide hotlines during the economic meltdown. Marti Gibbons(ph) of Cleveland Heights, Ohio wrote, I almost had to pull over my car because it made me cry. I hope it was widely heard because it turned the abstraction of unemployment statistics into the daily reality of people out of a job. Others like Zoltan Roman(ph) of Victoria, British Columbia, well they weren't as moved.
If you're in the process of turning into an audio tabloid, could you warn your listeners in a timely fashion that we may tune out or turn off? I'm deeply sorry for Sylvia Martinez, as for all the suddenly unemployed, but I should not be subjected to their untrammeled exhibitionism. Some of you asked for a break from the stories of economic gloom and doom altogether. John Sattler(ph) of Colebrook, Connecticut wrote, at some point, it's not just seen that other people have it tough too, at some point, it turns into a dirge and that drags us down even further.
Nathan Porter(ph) Scottsdale, Arizona had similar thoughts after listening to our interview with a restaurant owner whose business wasn't getting the ideal mid-week Valentine's Day bump. Saturday is already the busiest day of the week for most restaurants and Mr. Porter wrote, my wife and I think we are listening to Negative Public Radio. She works at a resort hotel, where they are actually experiencing a surge in business because Valentine's Day is on a Saturday, in the middle of a three-day weekend. There are a few positive stories. If you would report on them, we might then think of you as Neutral Public Radio.
Well, negative, positive or somewhere in between, we always want to hear from you. So please go to npr.org and click on Contact Us at the top of the page. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.